NCDD Resource Centerhttp://ncdd.org/rc
The resource archive of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation.Wed, 16 May 2018 05:39:41 +0000en-US
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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.3Organising stakeholder workshops in research and innovation – between theory and practicehttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12304/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12304/#respondFri, 18 May 2018 13:00:35 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12304The 26-page article, Organising stakeholder workshops in research and innovation – between theory and practice (2017), was written by Morten V. Nielsen, Nina Bryndum, and Bjørn Bedsted, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “This article addresses the theory and practice of creating responsiveness among actors through deliberative dialogue processes with stakeholders from diverse institutional settings…The article concludes that while theoretical perspectives can provide general guidance, practical experience is essential when dealing with the trade-offs that are an intrinsic part of organising stakeholder workshops.”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

Developments in research and innovation (R&I) are often created through collaboration between diverse actors, and the innovations created can affect actors far beyond the innovation process itself. Through deliberation, all affected actors can be brought together. Deliberation among actors of research and innovation is not something new, yet the current policy initiatives promoting deliberation in EU-led research has an interesting potential to mainstream deliberation in larger R&I projects in Europe. There has been a push within the EU to increase dialogue among all actors of research and innovation, including public administration, businesses, and civil society organizations. The dialogue is promoted as part of the objective to create responsible research and innovation (RRI1 ) in Europe. The promotion of RRI creates new opportunities for deliberation and at the same time defines a context and aim for such deliberation. One key aim is to achieve responsiveness among actors of research and innovation.

The article will examine how existing theory and practical experience with stakeholder workshops can inspire dialogue processes working toward the aim of responsiveness. Thus, both the theoretical literature based on practitioner experiences and the literature on democratic ideals will be applied to explore the complexity of deliberation processes in R&I. To highlight gaps between theoretical work and dialogue practices, the article will use a case, which illustrates the challenges of organizing stakeholder workshops. Through the illustration, the article aims to move discussions of stakeholder workshops to the muddy center, where difficult decisions and practical trade-offs have to be considered. Central to the success of dialogue initiatives is the ability to create a constructive dialogue among the participating stakeholders. The article discusses how something constructive can come out of something as imperfect as dialogue between strangers.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12304/feed/0“Nothing about politics”: The political scope in rural participatory governance, a case-study in the Basque Country, Spain.http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12297/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12297/#respondWed, 16 May 2018 13:00:49 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12297The 29-page article, “Nothing about politics”: The political scope in rural participatory governance, a case-study in the Basque Country, Spain. (2017), was written by Patricia García-Espín, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “Participatory mechanisms are understood as settings for citizens’ political engagement. However, participants frequently depict these institutions as nonpolitical. In this paper, the political scope of participatory institutions is examined through a case-study of town meetings (concejos abiertos) in the Basque Country (Spain)”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

“There is nothing, nothing, nothing about politics. … You don’t know who strips to each [political] side. We never talk about that” (M. R., participant in a concejo abierto).1 Maria Rosa is a farmer who was engaged in a town meeting in a rural community in Araba (Basque Country, Spain). Two years before, she started attending meetings and acquired such extensive knowledge of the rules and the daily procedures that she was elected to the administrative board by her neighbors. Like Maria Rosa, other participants in this participatory institution believe it to be strictly non-political. In other settings of community engagement such as participatory budgeting assemblies and neighborhood associations, participants also believe that they are not playing politics (Baiocchi, 2005; Ball, 2005; Talpin, 2012). At the core of this belief is the idea that broader political issues should not be addressed in settings dedicated to small deliberation on community problems (Ganuza & Francés, 2012).

The political scope of participation, like the range of issues which are addressed, is not something that can be deduced only from the institutional design and the list of powers formally attributed to the participatory institutions. It also depends on the cultural frame assumed by participants. As Baiocchi (2005) noted regarding Porto Alegre’s participatory budget (PB) process, participants found it unacceptable to speak about political issues in assemblies, as they were committed to solving community problems in a practical sense. Talpin (2012) noticed the same thing in several European cases. In concejos abiertos (rural town meetings in Araba) most of the issues that come under the title of “politics” also sit uneasily with the participants. Like Maria Rosa, other participants think that politics should stay away.

Through a case-study in the concejos abiertos of Araba, we analyze the political scope of a community-based participatory institution. I will show how participants understand and confer meaning to this participatory setting, a highly empowered institution of rural governance. As we will observe, within the cultural framework of “politics-away,” participants distinguish themselves from party politics, making space for their own decision-making; they limit potential conflict, divisions, and promote inclusiveness; and they sustain collective action, even on broader political issues such as environmental concerns. The focal point of the paper is that participants use selective depoliticization as the best approach to sustain community engagement.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12297/feed/0Authority and Deliberative Moments: Assessing Equality and Inequality in Deeply Divided Groupshttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12294/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12294/#respondMon, 14 May 2018 13:00:05 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12294The 35-page article, Authority and Deliberative Moments: Assessing Equality and Inequality in Deeply Divided Groups (2017), was written by Rousiley C. M. Maia, Danila Cal, Janine K. R. Bargas, Vanessa V. Oliveira, Patrícia G. C. Rossini, and Rafael C. Sampaio, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “The notion of equality is central to public deliberation, but few researchers have examined how participants construct interactions in face-to-face group discussion involving unequal conditions of authority. This study analyses discussion between slum residents and police officers in Brazil, focusing on both reciprocal and hierarchical relationships in the flow of deliberation”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

The literature on informal talk, political discussion and deliberation is growing at a rapid pace (Conover & Searing, 2005; Maia, 2012, 2017; Marques & Maia, 2010; Moy & Gastil, 2006; Walsh, 2004, 2007; Wyatt, Katz, & Kim, 2000). Conscious of this tendency, researchers are now quite cautious about specifying the features of different group-affiliations and the social conditions and circumstances enabling argumentative discussion (Black, 2008; Grölund, Bächtiger, & Setälä, 2014; Steiner, 2012; Wojcieszak & Mutz, 2009). The topic of authority is central to political theory. However, it is rarely operationalized in empirical research. Although important studies have looked at the dynamics of face-to-face group discussions involving unequal conditions (Gerber, 2015; Karpowitz & Mendelberg, 2014; Mendelberg, Karpowitz, & Oliphant, 2014; Pedrini, Bächtiger, & Steenbergen, 2013; Steiner, 2012; Steiner, Jaramillo, Maia, & Mameli, 2017; Walsh, 2007), these studies have not yet examined moments when conversation is shaped by hierarchical relationships. How authority is enacted in the flow of conversation remains poorly understood; and our knowledge of the sources of authority that constrain or enable dialogue is limited.

This paper contributes to filling this gap. Contrary to scholars who assume that authentic deliberation cannot be established between members of highly uneven authority, we argue that “moments” of constructive dialogue are possible and productive for deliberation. By focusing on intergroup communication between slum-dwellers and police officers in Brazil, we examine what sources of authority are mobilized in both deliberative and non-deliberative moments and how participants unequal in power can construct reciprocal relationships. To develop this study, we conducted six discussion groups with slums inhabitants and police officers in Brazil. This study applies the concept of “Deliberative Transformative Moments” (DTM) (Jaramillo & Steiner, 2014; Steiner et al., 2017), designed to assess how certain elements affect the flow of discussion.

This analysis contributes to explaining the complexity of the notion of equality in the dynamics of face-to-face group discussions. Against a static view of power relationships, our analysis clarifies a range of authority sources that serve to dynamically shape relationships in conversational contexts. Our findings reveal that sources of authority based on life experiences predominate when deliberation is at a high level, whereas functional credentials prevail when deliberation is low. We suggest that the role of authority on deliberation is far from straightforward; functional authority is not necessarily dominative or coercive, and it can be combined with behaviors (such as empathetic understanding, search for commonalities, and self-criticism) that lead to reciprocal interactions.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12294/feed/0Focus Group Discussions as Sites for Public Deliberation and Sensemaking Following Shared Political Documentary Viewinghttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12279/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12279/#respondFri, 27 Apr 2018 13:00:08 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12279The 27-page article, Focus Group Discussions as Sites for Public Deliberation and Sensemaking Following Shared Political Documentary Viewing (2017), was written byMargaret Jane Pitts, Kate Kenski, Stephanie A. Smith, and Corey A. Pavlich, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “This study examines the potential that shared political documentary viewing coupled with public deliberation via focus group discussion has for political sensemaking and civic engagement”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

While the field of political communication has paid attention to the importance of entertainment media in the last decade (e.g., Hmielowski, Holbert, & Lee, 2011; Young, 2004), little research has focused on political documentary as an influential medium and source for public deliberation and meaning-making (Nisbet & Aufderheide, 2009). A few studies have shown that political documentary has the potential to influence public perceptions and behaviors. For example, Howell (2011) found that UK viewers became more pro-environmental after being exposed to a film depicting the negative effects of climate change. Stroud (2007) found that the viewers of the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 were more likely to discuss politics with friends and family than were non-viewers. Related research has demonstrated that mass media generally, and political film and documentaries specifically, can enhance learning in the classroom (Krain, 2010; Sunderland, Rothermel, & Lusk, 2009) and influence the electorate (LaMarre & Landreville, 2009). Additional research has shown that combining media viewing with deliberative discursive engagement can further increase positive civic outcomes (Kern & Just, 1995; Rojas, Shah, Cho, Schmierbach, Keum, & Gil-De-Zuñiga, 2005). This may be in part due to the greater potential for collaborative sensemaking—the negotiated and discursive engagement in shared meaning making that happens during public deliberation (see Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). However, opportunities for collaborative sensemaking and public deliberation centered on a popular text are rare. Thus, we were interested in exploring focus groups as a potentially rich context for discursive engagement following the shared viewing of a political documentary (i.e., 2016, Obama’s America). We argue that when placed within the context of viewing popular political documentary, focus group discussions offer a meaningful site for public deliberation and collaborative sensemaking and as such should be added to the toolbox of deliberative pedagogy.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12279/feed/0The Influence of Communication- and Organization-Related Factors on Interest in Participation in Campus Dialogic Deliberationhttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12275/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12275/#respondWed, 25 Apr 2018 13:00:03 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12275The 31-page article, The Influence of Communication- and Organization-Related Factors on Interest in Participation in Campus Dialogic Deliberation (2017), was written by Gregory D. Paul, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “This study explored how communication and campus factors influence students’ interest in and perceived helpfulness of dialogic deliberation participation”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

As higher education continues to evolve in response to stakeholder demands, individuals associated with colleges and universities, from employees to students to alumni, find themselves needing to make difficult decisions about pressing problems based on sometimes competing interests. Funding changes, calls for increased transparency and accountability, and increasing competition have made such decisions more difficult and intense, shaping the ways in which colleges and universities make decisions about their vision, goals, resources, and practices.

In both commercial and educational organizations, administrators tend to be the ones making these decisions. This top-down approach to decision-making comes with at least two problems in higher education. First, it can lead members to lose trust in administrators if they feel that decision-makers do not care for or ask for outside viewpoints. Members can begin to feel as if they have no voice, thereby undercutting their connection to or concern for their organization. Second, even if administrators ask for others’ viewpoints, communication during the decisionmaking process tends to reflect a zero-sum, competitive orientation in that people tend to argue for and cling to their existing thought patterns and meaning systems rather than learn or explore new ones (Hurtado, 2007). Additionally, when communicating with someone from a different group over tightly held views, goals, and beliefs (such as where funding should go), such communication typically breaks down into entrenched argument, with individuals turning toward their ingroups to reify their opinions, beliefs, and worldviews (Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997; Theiss-Morse & Hibbing, 2005). In colleges and universities with increasing diversity and decreasing resources, such monologic communication is counterproductive individually and organizationally.

On campus, the number of programs devoted to dialogue and deliberation has grown significantly over the past decade (van Til, 2011), particularly as colleges and universities have expressed heightened interest in civic engagement and diversity (Bedinger, 2011; Thomas, 2010). A growing body of research has investigated the outcomes of participation in these programs, which largely focus on off-campus community issues (in the case of deliberation programs) or social issues (in the case of dialogue programs) rather than on-campus decision-making (Burkhalter et al., 2002; Gurin, Nagda, & Lopez, 2004; Hurtado, 2001; Spano, 2001). While these outcomes are promising for participants, we still have only a limited understanding of who participates in these programs. Research to date has largely explored how participation is associated with individual-level factors (e.g., demographic factors such as race and psychographic factors such as need for cognition) (Goidel, Freeman, Procopio, & Zewe, 2008; Jacobs, Cook, & Delli Carpini, 2009; Neblo, Esterling, Kennedy, Lazer, & Sokhey, 2010). Given that deliberation is inherently social, it also is important to explore the influence of social factors, particularly regarding communicative and organizational characteristics, on interest in participating. Additionally, given the democratic orientation of deliberation, it is important to examine participation interest of people who do not hold traditional decision-making roles, such as students.

This study examines how undergraduate students’ interest in participating in campus-based deliberative programming and the perceived helpfulness of such participation are influenced by communication-related and organization-related factors. Communication-related factors consisted of perceptions of debate and dialogue as approaches to communication. Organization-related factors included openness to diversity and ability to effect change. The study addresses the pragmatics of organizational decision-making by examining the influence of communication-related and organization-related factors on deliberation participation. Additionally, the study extends research on motivation to participate in deliberative programming as well as the factors underlying perceptions of such programming in higher education. Study findings have implications for how colleges and universities can put democratic principles into practice in their decision-making policies and practices.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12275/feed/0Explaining Political Efficacy in Deliberative Procedures – A Novel Methodological Approachhttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12270/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12270/#respondMon, 23 Apr 2018 13:00:09 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12270The 27-page article, Explaining Political Efficacy in Deliberative Procedures – A Novel Methodological Approach (2017), was written by Brigitte Geissel and Pamela Hess, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “This article…identifies factors which lead to increased group-related political efficacy in deliberative procedures applying an almost novel method, i.e. a quantitative meta-synthesis combining and aggregating data from case studies”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

Effects on political efficacy, i.e. citizens’ perceptions that they have an influence on public issues, are of great interest in research on deliberative procedures (e.g. Delli Carpini, Cook & Jacobs, 2004; Fishkin & Luskin, 1999; Rosenberg, 2007). As a crucial predictor of political participation, efficacy is pivotal for striving democracies and thus a significant concept in respective theories (Conway, 2000; Pateman, 1970).

Theorists have claimed for a long time that participation in deliberative procedures would improve citizens’ political efficacy. Empirically, the results are mixed. Recent works have shown that deliberative procedures can affect political efficacy positively, negatively or not at all. Some studies detected an increase of political efficacy in deliberative procedures (Fishkin, 1995; Grönlund, Setälä, & Herne, 2010; Nabatchi, 2007), but Morrell (2005) and others noticed little or no impacts (e.g. Gastil, 1999; Morrell, 1998; Stromer-Galley & Muhlberger, 2009; Walsh, 2003). A few scholars even noticed decreased efficacy when people are confronted with disagreement (e.g. Mutz, 2008). Obviously, impacts of deliberative procedures on efficacy depend on specific factors.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12270/feed/0Beyond Aggregation: “The Wisdom of Crowds” Meets Dialogue in the Case Study of Shaping America’s Youthhttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12264/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12264/#respondFri, 20 Apr 2018 13:00:27 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12264The 28-page article, Beyond Aggregation: “The Wisdom of Crowds” Meets Dialogue in the Case Study of Shaping America’s Youth (2017), was written by Renee G. Heath, Ninon Lewis, Brit Schneider, and Elisa Majors, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “The present interpretive case study examined how an inter-organizational partnership facilitating five large-scale public dialogues on childhood obesity, held throughout the United States, carried out its commitment to engage nonexperts in solutions”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

A handful of leaders across for-profit, nonprofit, and government sectors, including a nationally recognized medical doctor and nutrition expert, and directors from Nike, Inc., and the U.S. Surgeon General’s office, coalesced in a collaborative partnership of decision-makers under the name Shaping America’s Youth (SAY). Given their view that the so-called experts had failed to influence change, they agreed that the solutions to childhood obesity must be found in collaboration with ordinary citizens—“nonexperts.” This assumption led to SAY’s partnership with the nonprofit, public deliberation pioneer, AmericaSpeaks, whose influential 21st Century Town Meeting® model facilitated engaging citizens in solutions. 1 In line with the growing trend of large-scale deliberation meetings, these partners brought together citizens from a crosssection of community stakeholder groups in a series of public dialogues that would ultimately influence changes related to childhood obesity. The mission of SAY was “to assure that the voices of families and communities are integrated into local and national policy to improve the nutrition, physical activity, and health of children and youth” (SAY meeting minutes). The present study commenced when SAY was in its fifth year of organizing, which was devoted to engaging communities toward this mission through a series of town meetings. As scholars and practitioners, we were interested in the organizing question, how would SAY carry out its commitment to engage nonexperts in solutions? What we found was an instructive case study that a) provides a heuristic for eliciting the voices of nonexperts, b) documents perceived outcomes linking dialogic process and product, and c) challenges theoretical assumptions about the wisdom of crowds as simply an aggregate of individually held knowledge.

This paper proceeds with a theoretical understanding of the wisdom of crowds including two schools of thought—one absent of a deliberative communicative model and one inclusive of a communicative model of gleaning meaningful input from nonexperts. The communicative model we introduce is grounded in literature on dialogue, public dialogue, and deliberation. This literature provides the context for our findings. We argue that SAY chose to engage nonexperts in solutions with a meeting method grounded in dialogic principles. After describing the methods of the study, and the findings that explicate how nonexperts were engaged, we introduce several outcomes that participants perceived as a result of the meeting process. These outcomes suggest implications for communicative models of engaging nonexperts in solutions. They demonstrate the how and why leaders of social change may choose to communicatively engage nonexperts.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12264/feed/0Prompting Deliberation about Nanotechnology: Information, Instruction, and Discussion Effects on Individual Engagement and Knowledgehttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12262/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12262/#respondWed, 18 Apr 2018 13:00:36 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12262The 33-page article, Prompting Deliberation about Nanotechnology: Information, Instruction, and Discussion Effects on Individual Engagement and Knowledge (2017), was written by Lisa M. PytlikZillig, Myiah J. Hutchens, Peter Muhlberger, and Alan J. Tomkins, andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. From the abstract, “Deliberative (and educational) theories typically predict knowledge gains will be enhanced by information structure and discussion. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated key features of deliberative public engagement (information, instructions, and discussion) and measured impacts on cognitive-affective engagement and knowledge about nanotechnology”. Read an excerpt from the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

There are many desirable potential outcomes of participating in public engagements. Learning outcomes are especially important because knowledge is a prerequisite to offering informed policy input, which may make the input more useful and influential (Guston, 2014; Muhlberger & Weber, 2006). Prior research suggests deliberative public engagements, in particular, may improve public understanding of science and technology by providing participants with opportunities to study relevant information as they form their preferences (e.g., Farrar et al., 2010). However, not all studies find positive effects of deliberation (Delli Carpini, Cook, & Jacobs, 2004; Ryfe, 2005), and even when effects are found, it is difficult for researchers to identify the mechanisms responsible (e.g., Sanders, 2012).

Experiments investigating the effects of specific features of public engagement are especially important for advancing theoretical understanding of what features of public engagements work for what purposes and why, and to guide the design of effective engagements (PytlikZillig & Tomkins, 2011). In addition, because of concerns relating to issues of equality and engagement (Benhabib, 2002), it is important to examine potential moderators. Not all publics have equal information or influence relating to political or policy issues, and little research has examined whether certain deliberative mechanisms favor some groups over others (Fraile, 2014; Hickerson & Gastil, 2008; Karpowitz, Mendelberg, & Shaker, 2012).

Deliberative engagements include features such as provision of balanced information, encouragement of deep cognitive engagement, and group discussion (Fishkin & Luskin, 2005). Theory suggests these features may promote increased knowledge and potentially more well-justified attitudes and policy preferences (Chambers, 2003; Mendelberg, 2002). However, there are numerous empirical gaps in these theorized connections. For example, despite the centrality of deep cognitive engagement to deliberative theory, few studies of deliberative practice explicitly measure cognitive engagement, or the variety of other ways people may engage. Even fewer attempt to causally connect different forms of individual engagement to specific deliberative design features and outcomes, such as increased knowledge or understanding.

To begin to fill this gap, in the present studies, we experimentally varied features of deliberation (information, instructions, and discussion), and measured the individual and combined impacts of these features on individual-level engagement and knowledge. Further, we examined potential moderation by two other variables: gender—which is a longstanding basis of political inequality (Benhabib, 2002)—and individual differences in need for cognition (the tendency to enjoy and use effortful and deep thinking processes (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996)—a variable especially relevant to deliberation.

We conducted our studies in the context of engaging college science students in deliberations about potential ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) associated with nanotechnology. While the college classroom context is not representative of the majority of public engagement contexts, it is one such context, and one that facilitates controlled experimentation. In addition, findings from studies of the design of deliberative discussions in this context can specifically improve the use of deliberative practices when helping students consider ELSI implications of new science and technology developments—a practice which is increasingly encouraged (Barsoum, Sellers, Campbell, Heyer, & Paradise, 2013). Finally, findings in this context may suggest possibilities that should be investigated in other public engagement contexts.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12262/feed/0Testing Assumptions in Deliberative Democratic Design: A Preliminary Assessment of the Efficacy of the Participedia Data Archive as an Analytic Toolhttp://ncdd.org/rc/item/12253/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12253/#respondMon, 16 Apr 2018 13:00:28 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12253The 31-page article, Testing Assumptions in Deliberative Democratic Design: A Preliminary Assessment of the Efficacy of the Participedia Data Archive as an Analytic Tool (2017), was written by John Gastil, Robert C. Richards Jr, Matt Ryan, and Graham Smith andpublished in the Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 13: Iss. 2. In the article, the authors discuss how deliberative process design affects participants and the resulting policy, they then tested their hypotheses using case studies from Participedia.net, and finally offer implications for their theory. Read an excerpt of the article below and find the PDF available for download on the Journal of Public Deliberation site here.

From the introduction…

Experiments with new and traditional modes of public engagement have proliferated in recent years (Warren, 2009). In attempting to make sense of this shift in contemporary governance, democratic theorists, political scientists and participation practitioners have drawn inspiration from deliberative democratic theory (Nabatchi et al., 2012). From this approach, the legitimacy of political decision making rests on the vitality of public deliberation amongst free and equal citizens (Bohman, 1998).

A considerable body of research attempts to analyze the design, process, and consequences of exercises in public engagement from a deliberative perspective, with particular focus on randomly selected mini-publics (e.g., Fishkin, 2009) and participatory budgeting (e.g., Baiocchi, 2005). These designs, however, represent only a small proportion of the diverse universe of democratic innovations. Design features vary considerably among such processes, including the priority given to promoting deliberation amongst participants.

No official records, census, or statistics capture the presence of democratic innovations, let alone the kind of data necessary to test the robustness of assumptions within deliberative democratic theory. Researchers tend to be limited to case studies, often of exemplary cases that skew our expectations of democratic innovations. Larger comparative studies are generally within-type, such as among Deliberative Polls (List et al., 2013), Citizens’ Initiative Reviews (Gastil et al., 2016), and participatory budgeting (Sintomer et al., 2012; Wampler, 2007) or within the same political context (Font et al., 2016). Analysis across types and context (geographic and political settings) is relatively rare, since the level of resources required to collect the necessary cases is prohibitive.

The development of Participedia opens up the possibility of such analysis. Participedia (http://participedia.net) is a research platform that exploits the power of self-directed crowdsourcing (Bigham et al., 2015) to collect data on participatory democratic institutions around the world. It is designed explicitly to enable researchers to compare data meaningfully across types and settings, recognizing that such data is held by a diverse group of actors, who organize, sponsor, evaluate, research, or participate in democratic innovations. Participedia has existed since 2009 and currently hosts systematised information on in excess of 650 cases. With the support of a CA$2.5 million, five-year Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the coverage of cases globally will continue to increase rapidly.

This paper exploits the already available data from Participedia to offer the first systematic analysis across a wide variety of political contexts and types of democratic innovations to explore the relationships among design characteristics, deliberative process quality, and impacts on policy and participants. We begin with an account of a stylized input-process-output model intended to capture the relevant core assumptions of deliberative theory. The next section describes the Participedia project and platform in more detail, highlighting how it has been designed to allow the testing of deliberative and participatory theories across a range of cases developed in very different contexts. In the methods section that follows, we explain the challenges faced in coding effectively the Participedia data to accord with our model. This has necessitated not only the use of fixed data from the platform, but also content analysis of case descriptions while overcoming challenges of low levels of inter-coder reliability and missing data. The results show that there are interesting patterns of associations that emerge from the Participedia data. Many of these findings reinforce existing assumptions about the relationship between design, process, and impact, but some may surprise readers and warrant future investigation. We conclude with reflections on the implications of our findings for deliberative theory, our understanding of the design of democratic innovations, and the efficacy of Participedia as a method of generating comparable data in this field of study.

Download the full article from the Journal of Public Deliberation here.

About the Journal of Public Deliberation
Spearheaded by the Deliberative Democracy Consortium in collaboration with the International Association of Public Participation, the principal objective of Journal of Public Deliberation (JPD) is to synthesize the research, opinion, projects, experiments and experiences of academics and practitioners in the emerging multi-disciplinary field and political movement called by some “deliberative democracy.” By doing this, we hope to help improve future research endeavors in this field and aid in the transformation of modern representative democracy into a more citizen-friendly form.

]]>http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12253/feed/0Searching for Balance: America’s Role in the World (Connections 2016)http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12226/
http://ncdd.org/rc/item/12226/#respondFri, 13 Apr 2018 13:00:30 +0000http://ncdd.org/rc/?p=12226The seven-page article, “Searching for Balance: America’s Role in the World” by Robert J. Kingston was published in Kettering Foundation‘s 2016 edition of their annual newsletter, Connections – Kettering’s Multinational Research. For the eleventh article of the newsletter, Kettering drew from Kingston’s book Voice and Judgment: The Practice of Public Politics which discusses the role America should engage in when interacting with international relations. Below is an excerpt from the article and Connections 2016 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

All of us, I suspect, while we were still young children, encountered some history-making event that we know was to change the comfort of our little world. We did not surely understand it, nor even really “know” what it was; but we knew that it “happened,” that it “meant” something, and that someday, therefore, we should have to cope with it. To the now elders among American citizens, such an “event” may have been Pearl Harbor or the atomic bomb on Hiroshima; to a very few, even Poland, or Neville Chamberlain getting off a plane from Munich, a piece of paper (signed by Adolf Hitler) fluttering in his hand declaring, more wrongly than he could imagine, “Peace in our time!” Or for a somewhat younger generation, it will have been 9/11—and new enemies, new friends.

The long and continuing sequence of National Issues Forums—which (as this is being written) have addressed something near 100 issues, nationwide, over the past 30 years— provides now a valuable indication of the progress of public thinking, and the continuities in it, over time, otherwise unavailable, the likelihood of which was perhaps not fully apprehended during the earliest years of the NIF experiment. America’s sense of its place in the world is one such continuing theme.

In the 1980s the country passed through the depths of the Cold War, which, in effect, culminated with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Well, this was perhaps not the precise “depth” of the Cold War, granted Sputnik, the space race, and the Cuban Missile Crisis; but the period was certainly filled with deeply troubled and passionate concern about the relative nuclear strengths of the two superpower rivals. Three times in that decade the NIF forums took on a consideration of the US-Soviet relationship. Then again, immediately following the end of the Soviet era in 1989, they turned to consideration of America’s role in the world. And in the fall and winter of 2002-2003, within weeks of the US attack on Iraq, citizens were again discussing “Americans’ Role in the World” in their National Issues Forums.

Questions of international relations and foreign policy present a particular challenge to citizens of democracies, especially if they see themselves as a nation of immigrants. For most of the past century, fortunate Americans thought of themselves as somewhat better off than the rest of the world, and perhaps envied by it! When wars have had to be fought, they have been fought in places other than the United States itself and caused less of its citizenry to be directly involved in fighting. And the outcomes of the Second World War and the Cold War seemed to place the United States in a position where it could provide extraordinary assistance to the rest of the world, while fearing virtually nothing from it. At least, so some leaders and many citizens like to presume, while others seemed sometimes to prefer to pursue a policy of strength through fear.

This is just an excerpt, you can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

About Kettering Foundation and ConnectionsThe Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2016 issue of Connections, edited by KF program officer and senior writer/editor Melinda Gilmore; KF senior associate Philip Stewart; and KF vice president, secretary, and general counsel Maxine Thomas, focuses on our year-long review of our multinational research.